Last week, the Richmond City Council voted in favor of a city ordinance that will increase the local minimum wage from $8 to $12.30 an hour by 2017. The increase will be phased in over 3 years, and positions Richmond to have the highest minimum wage of any city in California.

While the minimum wage increase was initially going to be left up to voters in November, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin opted to have city council members vote on three minimum wage proposals of $11 an hour, $12.30 an hour or $15 an hour. The council voted 6-1 in favor of the increase to $12.30, with council member Tom Butt casting the lone dissenting vote.

“Fast food workers are walking out on their jobs today to once again protest low wages, demand the right to unionize and fight for better working conditions. The strikes are occurring in 50 cities including New York City, where there are multiple walk-outs plus a rally planned.

The first walkout was at the McDonald’s at 341 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn was there, as was City Council Member and Public Advocate hopeful Letitia James. James invoked Martin Luther King Jr., quoting the civil rights leader, “It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.””

“NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fast-food workers staged strikes at McDonald’s and Burger Kings and demonstrated at other stores in sixty U.S. cities on Thursday in their latest action in a nearly year-long campaign to raise wages in the service sector.

The strikes spread quickly across the country and have shut down restaurants in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Raleigh and Seattle, according to organizers.”

“Less than two weeks after filing a City of SeaTac initiative that would assure better wages and working conditions for thousands of low-wage SeaTac Airport workers, backers have announced that they have already surpassed the signature threshold.”

The initiative if passed will raise the minimum wage for these 5,000 workers to $15 an hour along with other reforms.

About

There are thousands of poverty-wage workers at our airport. Let’s make every airport job a good job.

Mission

Let’s make every job at Sea-Tac a good job.

Description

These baggage handlers, fuelers, passenger service workers, ground transportation workers, taxicab drivers, and cargo workers do work critical to the successful operations of Alaska and other airlines at our airport. However, they do not actually work for these large corporations.
Instead their jobs are contracted out to the lowest bidder. Most of these airline contractors pay poverty wages.
Workers across the airport report that benefits, if offered at all, are usually unaffordable for workers bringing home at or near the minimum wage for the long and onerous hours worked. And most of these workers are immigrants that have come from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to pursue a better life in Seattle. Their work is vital to keeping Sea-Tac running and providing good service for the more than 32 million passengers that pass through our airport. They work hard – sometimes holding down two or three jobs.
They deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and to a make a living wage.

“For the past several days, a proposal by an outside group to raise some minimum salaries almost $6 an hour above the state minimum and impose mandatory paid sick leave for transportation and hospitality workers in have caused some concerns in the city.”

“The proposed ordinance would raise minimum wages from the state’s current $9.19 per hour to $15 an hour for all workers defined to be in the hospitality and transportation businesses inside SeaTac.”

Chicago Fast Food, Retail Workers Go On Strike For Higher Wages

Photo credit: Ryan L. Williams
Hundreds of retail and fast food workers went on a coordinated strike this morning to call for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to unionize without interference.

It is said that we don’t need a minimum wage, that a minimum wage causes unemployment, that if the minimum wage were lower – or completely eliminated – then employers could afford to hire more workers. It is said often that this is “supply and demand” and an ironclad “law of economics.” It is of course an argument designed to appeal to the simpler minded half of the gene pool.

Yet two facts confront us.

One, the real purchasing power in constant dollar terms of the minimum wage has declined for 45 years, so there has been a de facto “lowering” of the minimum wage, and Two, we currently have a very persistent and high level of unemployment.

The laboratory of life has proved this favorite Chamber of Commerce meme to be a fabrication that is nowhere near real life economics.

We conclude that the theory that lowering the minimum wage increases employment is FALSE.

The Fair Wage folks urge you to get involved in passing the Eureka Fair Wage Act, also known as the Minimum Wage Ordinance. If passed through a popular vote, the Act would require large employers with 25 or more workers in Eureka to pay a $12 dollar minimum wage. A higher minimum wage, with a small business exception, will improve lives, make Walmart reconsider its presence in Eureka, boost the local economy, bring employment up, and allow individuals who work full time to rise just above the federal poverty level.

Meetings for the Eureka Fair Wage Act are now every Wednesday at 6:15pm at the Eureka Labor Temple, 840 E Street. More information can be found and questions answered by visiting the Eureka Fair Wage Act website, fairwages.org, or by calling 707-442-7465. If you are interested in helping the campaign in any way, wherever you live, please get in contact.